OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: coder101 on April 27, 2004, 02:27:06 pm
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Hi, it\'s after 4am here so I maybe be typing complete crap here, but, is there a project trying to make the binary SD card driver work with the 2.6 Linux kernels?
I\'m not sure that it is possible to intercept it\'s function calls into the kernel to accomadate the API changes from the 2.4.18 kernel till 2.6.X ones, but if it is I was wondering if anyone was working on it.
I think the Zaurus would run a lot better with a more modern kernel.
Off to sleep now. Must not buy things at this time of night. Must not ask silly questions at this time of night. Must not...
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I think the Zaurus would run a lot better with a more modern kernel.
Heh, no kidding. I can\'t count the times I told the community that. Fix the drivers and submit it to mainstream as soon as possible - anything else is ridicolous.
Unfortunately Sharp doesn\'t give a damn about mainstream since their crap runs \"good enough\".
So: The most promising approach seems to me help us finishing Kernel 2.6.5-JL (http://openzaurus.bkbits.net) and then merge that with the generic SD/MMC stuff found in the handhelds.org kernel and add SD support for the Zaurus.
2.6.5 - kernel development is on topic @ openzaurus-devel@lists.sf.net.
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Why cant we use scsi emualton for the sd. Thats how a desktop distro deals with sd. I shows up as a scsi driver.
JP
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Mickey,
I\'ll try to help if I can. Where do I FTP the source from or do I grap John\'s patch-2.6.5-jl2.diff.gz
What do I need to setup?
gcc version and ipkg would be nice? native compile or cross-compile? I do have an slightly unstable 4Gb microdrive to use.
Other libs?
I suppose YAMADA-san\'s patches will need to be forward ported too.
Umm, I had some other questions but they have disapeared now.
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Why cant we use scsi emualton for the sd. Thats how a desktop distro deals with sd. I shows up as a scsi driver. JP
That\'s how Linux deals with USB Mass Storage devices, not SD. When an SD card or any other type of flash card is put in a USB card reader the hardware in the reader (usually) makes it appear as a standard USB Mass Storage device, which is mounted like a SCSI drive. Most SD card readers have all the hardware in them to translate the SD interface into the USB Mass Storage interface, but it seems like the SD slot in the Zaurus requires a much lower level driver in software.
The SD spec is kept tightly under wraps by the SD Card Association and will only let you see the spec with a large fee and NDA. So you couldn\'t officially develop an open-source SD driver because of the NDA.
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The best way to develop an open source SD driver would be by reverse engineering the closed source one. That\'s still legal in most countries.
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Mickey,
I\'ll try to help if I can. Where do I FTP the source from or do I grap John\'s patch-2.6.5-jl2.diff.gz
What do I need to setup?
Great. You can download the complete 2.6.5-jl kernel source from openzaurus.bkbits.net.
Additionally you just need a cross compiler. A serial cable is useful for kernel debugging.
I suppose YAMADA-san\'s patches will need to be forward ported too.
Definitly.
Umm, I had some other questions but they have disapeared now.
Feel free to ask on openzaurus-devel@lists.sf.net, that\'s where the kernel developing action happens. You can ask here, but I won\'t be able to answer - thankfully OZ kernel developing is one of the few projects where I am not involved.
Occasionally visitting #oe on irc.freenode.net helps, too.
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Instead of having mailing lists, won\'t it be better to have a forum like this?
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No. At first, most of us developers don\'t like web forums at all. Personally, I perceive Mailinglists and Usenet as having a much better signal-to-noise ratio.
Besides, openzaurus-devel is an established mailing list since a couple of years.
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There are indications that the 7x0 is using the onboard mmc/sd controller which does have some source released. Your best bet would be to start there and try merging it with the handhelds.org mmcsd driver.
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To put more fuel into the fire... this just came in on linux-arm-kernel written by Mr. Arm-Linux himself, Russell King.
On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 02:43:34PM +0200, Nils Faerber wrote:
] As some of you might already have recognised I am struggeling to support
] a new StrongARM based platform using kernel 2.4.
I\'m not sure what you\'re expecting as a response. As far as I\'m
concerned 2.4 is completely and utterly dead and buried. 2.6
contains a much better power subsystem, and it\'s known to work
on SA11x0 platforms.
Why people insist on religiously sticking to 2.4 I\'ve no idea.
There is NO technical reason for this attitude.
So, take this as an official notification that there will be NO
futher replies by myself to messages about 2.4 kernels, period.
That means that the 2.4 SA11x0 is effectively unmaintained and
unsupported.
If that doesn\'t provide enough reason for people to move on in
life I\'ve no idea what will. Maybe removing all the 2.4 kernel
patches from the FTP site... ? 8)
So, whom @ Sharp can we forward this?